Boiled frogs and fractured communities

what causes people to get in groups? what causes them to stay?

I used to think I’d get a Masters one day. I even knew the title of my future thesis. ‘Acculturation of Youth in Old Order Mennonite Communities.’ Maybe it would be for an organizational dynamics/psych program. A real barn burner, huh? Some professor dodged a bullet.

I have always been fascinated by how and why people act the way they do and how and why they choose to believe. Belief in anything. Whether a religion, philosophy, Ponzi scheme, or diet craze, what causes people to believe and how do they share that belief with others? How do beliefs become movements? My interest is less concerned with a subjective evaluation of whether a belief is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ but rather how it’s held, how it’s shaped, and how it spreads.

That fascination is rooted in place. I grew up in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia surrounded by an Old Order Mennonite community. I was born in the city and our family didn’t move ‘back home’ to the Valley until I was about five. During that five years, as my parents finished grad programs and began careers, I fingerpainted in the shadow of the Richmond Coliseum with African American teachers I loved and kids who did not look like me. I don’t remember ever asking why everyone else looked different. Maybe I did and the answers made me not care. I am glad for that.

Well, our family moved to the Valley and all of sudden my closest friends (who looked like me) didn’t have cars or TVs. I don’t remember ever asking my parents why. Maybe I did and the answers made me not care. I am glad for that, too. That says far more about my parents than it does me.

I saw lots of good and bad in that community. Very good and very bad. That’s the same as in any community, but what was a bit different were the bright lines that separated those within from those without. The bright lines caused people to wrestle with lots of questions - distilled and starker than those faced outside the community (the same questions with sharper edges). Those questions often led to the ultimate question of whether they should stay in or opt out.

In that community, it wasn’t like staying in or opting out of a book club, it was staying in or opting out of a life. Sectarian groups like the Old Order Mennonites largely last because of their bright lines. The movement giving us the Amish and Mennonites is known as the Radical Reformation. In 1525, the movement started out as a rebellion against the Church (and thus State) in Zurich, Switzerland.¹ Over time, as the world became a safer place for the descendants of those rebels, they shifted focus from spreading their ideas and drawing people in to preserving the community they had managed to form.

That preservation was through establishment of an ‘ordnung’ (German for ‘order’), a set of rules to govern their lives together. That order, or way of doing things, served as a fence keeping the wolves out and the sheep in (as I heard it described by an Old Order Bishop when young).

Enough people have embraced idealized notions of the Mennonites’ Anabaptist cousins, the Amish, to know a little about parts of the ordnung - buggies, plain suits, dresses, and bonnets oh my - all of the ‘Witness’ stuff minus the murders and Harrison Ford. As an aside - that movie came out 40 YEARS AGO and here I am dropping the reference in passing as if anyone alive under the age of 50 (well, 49.75) has any idea what I am talking about.

But I digress. Enough is generally known about the community to know that it is different, and when you think of the cultural forces that bombard our lives and influence our every move, that difference prompts a question: How do they manage to maintain community against the odds?

I would think about that question as I watched fracturing in my own faith tradition, cracks develop in my local community, and constant eroding of a ‘belonging’ mindset prevalent throughout much of the United States since the end of the Second World War (belonging to churches and synagogues, belonging to bowling leagues and gardening clubs, belonging to civic groups, clubs, and parties). Even in those pre-9/11 halcyon days, I’d find myself wondering about the end of belonging and whether there was an answer. I began thinking more intensely about Old Order acculturation (the less-used definition of “the process by which a human being acquires the culture of a particular society from infancy”)² and how some of the things I saw growing up might have been intentional efforts to acculturate kids as opposed to what I’d thought of as ‘something to do on a Friday night.’ I wondered whether, if I was right (and I am wrong a lot … a lot), there were any lessons I could distill and apply to grow or at least maintain community outside the Old Order construct.

Some of what would have been in that thesis and might one day make a book had to do with what I will call ‘youth group’ events (in my part of the world it was called the ‘young crowd’). Youth in Old Order circles means loosely what youth means in EYN churches I visited in Nigeria - a group delineated by age and status. From the mid-teens until married, individuals were part of a youth group that would meet together frequently. From getting together to play sports depending on the season (volleyball, basketball, and softball) to tackling the job of mowing the church yard as a group, to Sunday evening ‘singings,’ group events filled kids’ calendars. Annual bus trips, days in the mountains, coastings (sledding parties), or ice skating filled in empty spots. Now for most of the ‘kids,’ their schedules were already full. Though some might wonder about all of the time they would free up if they ditched tv, with jobs and working on farms, Old Order schedules tended to be pretty full already.

When I was a teenager, I loved basketball. From neighborhood pickup games on Tuesday evenings and Sunday afternoons (unless it was warm enough to play baseball³) to pickup games with the Old Order young crowd on Fridays, I never stopped to think about how those evenings weren’t really about basketball (and ham sandwiches and sweet tea) - they were about acculturation. If you have a small sectarian community surrounded by a world of options, one way you maintain community is to make sure that individuals, especially the young, develop bonds so close that someone feels more connected to the person they like least within than they do to the person they like most without.⁴

But in that world, it was the bonding coupled with the ordnung that acculturated. It was the building bonds within the group while at the same time making it more difficult to form bonds outside of the group.

For instance, plain clothes served to identify members to outsiders, to each other, and to themselves. Prohibitions on flashiness such as ‘worldly’ hairstyles or makeup served as a fence distinguishing the sheep from the wolves.⁵ It is tough for anyone, much less a teenager to blend into an outside group if they are still in their inside uniforms. To that end, even rebellious teens found it hard to slip the bonds. Disallowed music (cassette tapes) had been passed down from older siblings before they ‘joined the church,’ so music tastes often seemed a generation behind. Kids who changed clothes in order to blend in at the county fair never really assimilated because just as people on the outside had a skewed view of the community, so too did people in the community of those on the outside and what might shed their distinctiveness.

So, if to acculturate you foster connection within the group and make it more difficult for people to form connection outside the group, it seems building barriers might be more and more important as the group becomes more and more … how shall we put it … ‘unconventional.’

While plain clothes and appearance might be superficial barriers, others are far more effective and not easily shed: limitations on exposure to outside influences, limitations on education, limitations on exposure to culture (to the extent possible), limitations on the ability to travel, limitations on access to ‘world-shrinking’ technology, and making people anxious about the consequences of leaving (will family and the community reject you?, will your parents still help you purchase the farm?, what will people say?, what will people say when they find out you didn’t go to high school?). Like a bundle of barrier building sticks.

I always wanted to focus on ways that communities are built through basketball games and sweet tea - that acculturation through intentional events and developed belief in and reliance on the community - but I was naive, there is far more to mine in looking at those barriers when we turn our gaze from the Old Order world to our polarized and fractured country.

The ways options are curtailed and people are encouraged (or manipulated) into joining or staying in conservative religious communities are simply the way people are drawn into and kept in some factions or groups. Limiting education and the resulting limits on opportunity, limiting exposure to different schools of thought, fomenting distrust of information critical of the community, labeling outsiders as ‘dangerous,’ stifling expression unless it is expression in community approved directions, creating a constant feeling of fear that others are out to take what you have, and encouraging anxiety about what will happen if you leave — well, I have seen enough cult documentaries on Netflix to know that more ‘communities’ are maintained through prohibitions, limitations, and fear than through sweet tea.

I have known a lot of people for a long time who drifted towards the MAGA movement over the past decade. People I like and respect. For some, I get it. MAGA represents a school of thought that is well-suited to those who distrust government, who don’t buy into the social contract, who want a world that will protect their dreamt-of future self-interests (tax breaks for those with immense resources because they themselves want to be those with immense resources), who tend to be culturally Christian rather than theologically religious or spiritual, who take a skewed Randian view of the world - one in which they confuse themselves and those they follow for producers when, in fact, many are the epitome of looters, and who, in most cases, don’t want to get into the weeds of policy or be questioned about positions.

I might disagree or think I am better informed than many in that group, but, at the end of the day we just disagree. I know where they stand and they know where I stand and, to that end, it is just a clash of civilizations(esque) - one that incorporates Colin Woodard’s American Nations thesis. That is a bit esoteric. What I mean is that with true-red, MAGA through and through individuals who are Trump loyalists simply because he symbolizes a view and approach they share (people who don’t really care if he tells the truth or not, people who don’t care whether he shrinks or increases the debt, people who truly wouldn’t care if he killed that imagined person on Fifth Avenue - people who simply care that he is their figurehead in the fight against ‘the other’), there is just a cultural conflict, an ideological divide like that imagined by Huntingdon but one wrapped in Woodard’s unique U.S. cultural landscape. Maybe that’s still esoteric, but it makes sense to me. (Read Huntingdon and Woodard, now).

While there are those that I would naturally assume to be attracted to MAGA (even though many of them seemed to have no use for celebrity culture, let alone celebrities who pee on your leg and tell you it’s raining), others seem to be acculturated into the movement. They listen as others made them feel better about a lack of education or lack of knowledge, convincing them that the educated elite are twisting facts and are not only disinterested but actively opposed to their farming/blue collar/mining/[insert whatever word works] lives.⁶ They not only adopt a zero sum game world view but seem to accept the idea that they have topped out in terms of achievement and that the only way to get more is to make sure that others get, and the government takes, less. Without some community authority to actually establish rules, they self limit access to information, education, travel, and exposure to other ideas, criticism, and world views.

Those individuals are acculturated into a movement and used as pawns by true believers. But why do they stay? When they went from supporting their movement during a campaign because of promises of lower prices, a roaring stock market, the return of jobs, and the immediate end of foreign wars, why are they not turning away when prices go up, the market goes down, jobs stay gone, and foreign wars continue?

Part of the answer might lie in the ‘Wisconsin Card Sorting Test,’ which features prominently in Leor Zmigrod’s recent book The Ideological Brain. In the test, participants were provided a deck of cards (on the computer) and asked to sort the cards into different groups. The different colored cards had different shapes on their faces. But the participants were not told how to sort the cards, only that they would receive feedback if they sorted correctly or incorrectly.

Participants eventually figured out that they could disregard the images on the card because the objective was to sort by color. At that point, sorting became routine, fast, and maybe even a bit fun. After ten or fifteen rounds, though, a participant would sort a card by color and get feedback that they had messed up. They didn’t know it, but the rules had changed.

Chaos ensued.

Many participants were confused, a bit angry, and even felt betrayed when told the green card wasn’t supposed to go in the green ‘pile.’ Assuming there had been a glitch, they tried to sort by color again, and again. Wrong. Wrong! They tried different ways of sorting to try to see what would ding ‘correct.’ After nearly throwing up their hands, they tried sorting by the symbols on the cards rather than the anything having to do with color and … bingo. That was it.

But rules of games and tests are not supposed to change halfway through, right? And what happens when they do? For many in the Card Sorting Test, they distrusted the test, they distrusted the test administrators, and they lacked confidence that they knew what to do going forward. That first shift from color to shape worked, but did that mean that they were supposed to sort by shape going forward? If so, for how long? Would the rules shift again? Were there even ‘rules’ for the test anymore?

As Zmigrod explains, not all participants reacted to the change in the rules the same way, suggesting that participants have multiple layers in such a situation:

There is the participant who notices the change in the rule governing the game and responds by changing in line with the new demands of the task. This version of you is the adaptable, cognitively flexible individual. When the world changes, you may feel surprise, but you have no fear. You change with the times, with the demands of the environment. You are not strongly rule-bound. You are happy to slip between habits. In fact, you don’t mind having no habit at all. You easily switch between modes of thinking; you are fluid; elastic; you adapt.

[But] there is another you. In this version of you, you hate the change. You notice the fact that the old rule no longer works, and you refuse to believe it. You … try again and again [in vain] to repeat the first rule….. In fact, you will be punished every time you repeat the original habit. The unnerving BEEP will hit you like a slap in the face. But you won’t move, won’t dodge the blow. You will remain immobile, hanging on tightly to the false belief that somehow the … beep will … be replaced by a jolly melody. [You have a] false and nostalgic belief that the environment around you will magically return and … you don’t need to change. You persevere even when it would be faster to sever ties with the past and move on. This is the cognitively rigid version of you.⁷

Zmigrod’s book goes into much more detail about how some brains are primed for a rigid ideology, but even that snippet helps explain how those who acculturate stay in groups - even when they know the game has changed. In fact, it is a vicious cycle where the changing game and rules feeds the acculturation and then continuing change hardens resolve and makes it less likely that one will leave a group. What’s more, some of the ‘sticks’ of acculturation foster that cognitive rigidity. For example, limits on education, limits on access to criticism, and limits on travel take tools out of the toolbox that tend to develop fluidity and elasticity. Education, critical thinking, and exposure to other ‘cultures’ all make it more likely that when confronted with what appears to be a sudden change in the rules someone sees nuance rather than a bright line. Someone understands the ways rules have changed before. Someone is more focused on how to move forward with the new rules rather than lament the loss of the old and assign blame for the change.

One thing that seems to differentiate the cognitively rigid and the flexible is the degree to which they have structured their lives around absolutes. When I was young a friend’s father told me that something could not have happened (I forget what) because the Earth is 6000 years old. I guess that was 30 years ago, so happy 6030th birthday Earth. I just remember saying ‘what?, what about the dinosaurs or the Grand Canyon?’ I am sure there was an answer and, though I can’t remember it, I am fairly certain it was nonsense.

He had structured his life and belief system around a certain interpretation of religious texts that left no room for mystery, no room for unanswered questions, and no room for science. As economist John Kenneth Galbraith’s said, “[f]aced with a choice between changing an opinion and proving that it is unnecessary, most people focus on proving.” Nailed It! When your belief system and life is centered on a 6000 year-old Earth, it is not just centered on a 6000 year-old Earth, it is also centered on a particular view of the role of men and women, of race, of science, of sexuality, and of the future, and so on. Confronted with changing rules, some people are forced to choose between scrapping all they thought they knew or doubling down.

If you have an analogous ‘6000 year-old’ view and are presented with information indicating it is all wet - what do you do? It depends. Does evidence the Earth (or whatever) is billions of years old make you go ‘that is really cool!’ or does it threaten to undermine every single thing you believe? If you depend on a certain reading of a text to underpin your entire existence, what happens when you find out there are typos?

Ok, the age of the Earth is an extreme, but what if your entire life is centered on a particular industry (maybe mining or farming or a factory) or what if you are holding on to the views of race, gender, and sexuality from movements you were acculturated into long ago? What if your life was centered around a particular notion of community? What do you do when the rules seem to change? What do you do when automation arrives, green energy emerges, or subdivisions start going up? What do you do when science and medicine start painting a different picture of gender and sexuality and when old views of race are shown to be full of !&*%? What do you do when the church closes, or the members are no longer able to care for each other the way they did in the past?

For the cognitively rigid, you simply refuse to change. You tilt against the windmills, you dismiss science and evidence, you choose to believe those who tell you they will bring the past back over anyone who says they will help you adjust to the present and prepare for the future. For the cognitively flexible, it takes effort but you adjust.

Being cognitively flexible does not mean you become relativistic - it simply means you don’t become a caricature, you don’t bury your head in the sand and your fingers in your ears. You question, but you question in the effort to find the truth and adapt your life to it. You don’t question in order to adapt the truth to your life.

I guess all of this (yes, the whole 37 paragraphs - come on, 2 don’t count, one is a sentence and the other is two words) is simply to say if you are acculturated into a group, make sure it is because of the bonds, not the barriers. If you are acculturated into a group and you have a pretty good feeling that it was a ‘barrier’ type deal - well, you know the code to break the barriers - education, exposure, critical thinking, and travel. And whether you are in or out of a group, and whether it is because of sweet tea or because you are scared to death, shoot for cognitive flexibility.

In a world of boats, be the ocean.

Be the !(&%$#* ocean.

1. In late January 1525, Jörg vom Haus Jacob (known as George Blaurock), confronted a priest in church as he approached the pulpit asking him ‘what [are you] going to do,’ when the priest answered ‘go preach the Word of God,’ Blaurock responded ‘not you, I am sent to preach.’ A week later, Blaurock got to the pulpit first and began sharing a view of Christianity based on centering actions on biblical teachings and not baptizing anyone who was not able to make their own decision regarding the matter. Chaos ensued. That fundamental belief that only those old enough to make their own decision should be baptized (as opposed to infants) provided the descriptor for many in the movement — ‘Anabaptists’ - those who believed in re-baptizing (as everyone had already been baptized into the Catholic Church when infants. Four years later, Blaurock was burnt at the stake.

2. “acculturation” Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, 2025. June 4, 2024.

3. Well, in our world it was incrediball, because we played on a horse pasture where we had built a baseball field with reduced dimensions — and Babe Ruth could not have hit an incrediball 200 feet.

4. Layoff the ‘without criticism.’ It is an archaic use but I like the way it reads.

5. And very notably tend to focus on women and girls rather than men and boys.

6. I’m referring to the specific way education and knowledge have been attacked - elitism in general has played a huge role in creating our current political climate (see, for example), but that general elitism and speaking down to large portions of the electorate is not the same as the intentional effort to paint education itself as the world of the elite - and making ignorance a virtue.

7. Leor Zmigrod, The Ideological Brain: The Radical Science of Flexible Thinking (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2025), 19.